An Analysis of Primary School Children's Accounts of Classroom Interaction

Abstract

The ethogenic paradigm refocuses the attention of researchers on the capacity people have to make an account of their actions, their thinking and their experience. This capacity is deemed to be essentially human and therefore at the heart of research endeavours which seek to understand the nature of man. The process of accounting, then, becomes a central concern both in terms of an analysis of the process itself, and in terms of the knowledge people have of the social worlds of which they are members. This paper is about the social world of childhood, as told to me by a group of primary school children with particular reference to their accounts of life in the classroom. The children reveal a complex knowledge of the rules of social interaction. They are aware of rules relating to their membership in the culture of childhood, the rules of adult culture, in which they experience partial membership, and the rules relating to interaction between these ‘cultures’. Their dual membership in childhood and adult cultures influences their interpretation of teacher behaviour and their interpretation of the process of education. Much of their talk revolved around interactions which explored and confirmed the existence of these various sets of rules. Knowing how to be competent members of the classroom (in terms of both the teacher's agenda and their own agenda) was a primary concern of these children, and teachers who prevented such competence by changing or breaking the rules were treated to reciprocal disruptive behaviour. At the same time the children were capable of playing with and merging these rule sets to create humourous and aesthetic moments in the classroom. Furthermore, because they constantly explored the dimensions of the rules operating in any one situation, they were able to cope with a variety of teachers who had different conceptions of the rules of teacher‐pupil interactions and of the educational process.